Clinton scores prized endorsement from Gov. Jerry Brown
Clinton scores prized endorsement from Gov. Jerry Brown
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hillary Clinton landed a coveted endorsement from California Gov. Jerry Brown Tuesday, patching up a strained relationship between the two Democrats as she seeks to deliver a final blow to Bernie Sanders’ campaign.
Clinton heads into California and the other end-of-the-line primaries June 7 with the Democratic nomination virtually locked up — she needs just 71 delegates to reach the required threshold at the party’s summer convention in Philadelphia. But Sanders is staging boisterous rallies across the state and running TV ads in hopes of delivering an upset that he says would strengthen his claim to the nomination, despite the numbers.
While Clinton’s campaign has been looking to California as the triumphant conclusion to her primary run, her lead appears to have vanished in recent days. Polling last week showed a race that’s nearly tied.
Clinton is still expected to lock up the nomination before the polls close in the Golden State, but a loss in California would amount to a deeply symbolic wound in a state she carried in the 2008 presidential primary against then-Sen. Barack Obama. It would also encourage Sanders to make good on his promise to remain in the race until the party convention in July, hampering Clinton’s ability to unify her party and sending her limping into the general election.
While the state has a pronounced Democratic tilt, a Clinton defeat could also embolden Republicans who would love to see her have to defend ground in a state that hasn’t sided with a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.
Thai authorities remove more tigers from Buddhist temple
BANGKOK (AP) — Wildlife officials have removed more of the 137 tigers kept in a Buddhist temple that operated as an admission-charging zoo and is suspected of illegally trafficking in the animals, Thai authorities said Tuesday.
The director of Thailand’s Wildlife Conservation Office, Teunjai Noochdumrong, said 40 tigers were tranquilized and removed in two days. They are being taken to government animal shelters elsewhere in the country.
She said they hope to move 20 tigers a day, or more if the weather is cool.
Teunjai said the temple in western Kanchanaburi province is still admitting tourists, but her personnel are warning visitors of the possible dangers of being present during the moving process. There are 300 government employees at the site, including 80 veterinarians.
Animal rights activists have long accused the temple of mistreating the tigers. The government suspects the monks have been involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals.
The monks had turned back previous attempts to take the tigers away, and continued to resist Monday morning. But they relented that afternoon after police obtained a court order to carry out the action.
SiriusXM suspends Glenn Beck because of Trump comments
NEW YORK (AP) — Conservative host Glenn Beck has been suspended by SiriusXM satellite radio for agreeing with an author who asked hypothetically “what patriot will step up” to remove Republican Donald Trump from office if he’s elected president and oversteps his authority.
SiriusXM said Beck’s program was suspended for this week and the company was “evaluating its place” in the lineup.
The comments “may be reasonably construed by some to have been advocating harm against an individual currently running for office,” SiriusXM said in a statement.
During an interview May 25, author Brad Thor said he was “about to suggest something very bad” before citing a weak Congress and asking “what patriot will step up” to stop President Trump if he tried to exceed the powers of his office.
“I would agree with you on that,” Beck responded.
Scientists say Flint water quality OK for bathing, showering
Municipal water in Flint, Michigan, has improved significantly and is safe for bathing and showering, although people should continue filtering the water before drinking it, scientists said Tuesday.
Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech engineering professor whose testing last summer confirmed lead contamination of the city’s water, said sampling in recent months has found that lead levels are steadily declining. Also trending downward are bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease, while byproducts from disinfectant chemicals are at normal levels.
“We’re seeing some very, very encouraging results,” Edwards said at a news conference in Flint, adding that he was “pretty hopeful” the water would meet federal standards for lead content within the next six months. Results of another round of testing expected in August will make the situation clearer, he said.
The economically struggling city of nearly 100,000 has been dealing with poor water quality since switching from the Detroit system, which draws from Lake Huron, to the Flint River in April 2014 as a short-term measure to save money while another pipeline to the lake was under construction.
Residents quickly complained of bad tastes, odors and colors. E. coli bacteria hit unsafe levels. And last September, state officials acknowledged failure to add chemicals to limit corrosion had enabled the river water to scrape lead from aging pipes, exposing people in some homes and schools to the potent neurotoxin.
Already hurting for doctors, Louisiana could lose even more
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Bahnsen Miller understands the challenges — and the damages — of Louisiana’s budget woes firsthand. You can’t ignore them if you’ve been in one of the state’s doctor training programs, constantly at risk of calamity.
The 31-year-old internal medicine doctor ran into questions about financial stability and watched Louisiana lose top talent to its neighbors as he recruited people to train at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in the state’s capital. The general surgery program lost applicants who went out of state because of the uncertainty, he said.
“Most residents stay in the state where they train, so if we lose a student, say, to Mississippi or Alabama for residency, there’s a good chance they’re not going to come back to Louisiana,” said Miller, one of the hospital’s chief residents last year.
Louisiana’s deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation.
And just the chatter about the financial threats is already having ripple effects, with other states’ doctor-training programs cherry-picking some of Louisiana’s top talent.
Ex-Miss Turkey gets suspended sentence for insulting Erdogan
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A court on Tuesday convicted a former Miss Turkey of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through social media postings and gave her a 14-month suspended sentence, amid deepening concerns that the country is swaying toward an increasingly authoritarian form of rule.
The court in Istanbul found 27-year-old model Merve Buyuksarac guilty of insulting a public official but immediately suspended the sentence on condition that she does not reoffend within the next five years.
Her lawyer, Emre Telci, said he would file a formal objection to the verdict and appeal her case at the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Justice.
Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing a satirical poem on her Instagram account in 2014. Prosecutors deemed it to be insulting to Erdogan, who was still prime minister at the time. She has denied insulting Erdogan.
Since becoming president in 2014, Erdogan has filed close to 2,000 defamation cases under a previously seldom-used law that bars insulting the president. Free speech advocates say the law is being used aggressively to silence and intimidate critics.
The trials have targeted journalists, academics and even schoolchildren. Coupled with a crackdown on opposition media and journalists, the trials have sounded alarms over the erosion of rights and freedoms in a country that was once seen as a model of Muslim democracy.